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Friday, August 16, 2013

Run AND walk, it's...The Mindwalker!!

My very first Kiwanis blog post was
about the amazing technological advances in prosthetics and how
science is getting closer to making them less like assisting props
and more like actual body parts that can be controlled
neurologically. I find those kinds of advancements fascinating and am
almost always amazed by them (like the bionic eye! How fantastic is
that?). I'm a little late in finding out about today's topic, but my
tardiness doesn't make it any less cool. Right?

It sounds like the title of a B-horror
movie from days past, but unlike William Castle's paralysis-causing
villain,“The Tingler”, a new device called the Mindwalker is
using new technology to help people with paralysis get mobile.

The Mindwalker project, funded by the
European Commission, is working to create the world's first
mind-controlled exoskeleton. The idea is to bypass the damaged spinal
cord and instead send brain signals to a robotic frame that supports
a person's body weight and animates when instructed by the wearer.

It's a two-part device: the arguably
more simple robot itself and the complex aspect of controlling the
exoskeleton with the mind. This mind-reading technology is called
Brain/Neural Computer Interface, or BNCI, and can turn EMG
(electromyography) signals from the patient's shoulder or EEG
(electroencephalography) signals from the brain into electronic
commands. The user wears a “dry technology” EEG cap that gets rid
of the need for invasive electrodes or awkward wet caps, and commands
are sent from the brain to the exoskeleton attached to the user's
legs.

As time has progressed, more modes of
operation have been developed. For example, the best way involves
wearing specialized glasses that have flashing diodes on the lenses.
The diodes process light, and the EEG cap measures whether the user
is concentrating more on the left side, which makes the exoskeleton
walk, or the right side, which makes it stop. However, if the user is
not paralyzed from the waist up, he or she can use a pressure sensor
in the lower back to move the Mindwalker by leaning to one side or
the other.

This is a lot of technological
development, especially considering the project has only been
underway for three years. The project has plans to continue for
another five years. Developers are hoping to make the device less
bulky, but who knows what else could happen in that time?

Isn't this stuff awesome? What do you
think about the Mindwalker? Do you think it could be available to a
widespread market in the future?